The vast majority of electronic games today involve a purchasing model where the player buys the rights to play a game, often indefinitely, for a lump sum of money. At that point, the player may play the game as often as they wish without incurring any more costs. Some players play the purchased game for a few hours, some for hundreds of hours and others will play it for thousands of hours. In all cases, the gaming company derives their revenue purely from the initial sale. The disadvantages with this is that those players who really enjoy the game, may very likely pay more for the gaming opportunity and, accordingly, this may be viewed as lost revenue potential for the gaming company. This may include both single and multi-player games.
In games today, generating revenue on behalf of the player does not exist. Games do not provide an opportunity for players to accrue financial pools of money for their own benefit. Role-driven games do not consider involving financial achievement as part of the role-drive game itself.
Other variations of gaming models include a smaller (though significant) lump sum charge along side an additional monthly fee for use during that month. These are often MMOG, or Massively Multi-player On-line Game. Others are just multi-player games. In this model, the player interacts with other human opponents or partners, and in order to do for any given month, they must pay a monthly fee. This model becomes slightly more desirable than the previous in that the maker of the game obtains not only a base revenue, but also a recurring revenue stream according to the continued interest level of the consumer. This model's disadvantage is that there is only binary correlation between the player's interest and the revenue earned in a monthly cycle. Either the customer has or has not paid, and therefore, value any individual might be willing to pay is still irrelevant. Rather, the game's manufacturer is left to estimate the game's economic elasticity. Thus, the manufacturer must try to maximize revenue based on the model of each player as a binary “yes/no” payer, setting the subscription price according to their estimates.